Road Map to Success

I have always loved maps. I remember taking road trips when I was a child and watching the exits and looking on the map to see where we were. I still do that today, and although I may not remember what everything stands for on a map, I still love to look at them and figure out the best way to get somewhere.

Did you know that today is National Read a Road Map day? True advocates of this day say not to use online maps but to use a paper map and follow a road. I say read a map – any map – and really understand what it means.

So in the spirit of this day, I’d like to encourage you to map out your marketing plan. Put together something, even if it is just for the next week or the next month. Here are a few things you can do to get started on your road map to success:

Write down your plans

You may have the memory of an elephant, but don’t rely solely on that – write your plan out. Once you see it on paper it may look foolish or you may discover gaps that you didn’t think of. Start with your essentials. Do you focus on email marketing and social media? Or are events and press releases more your style? Start with what you know, and you can add more channels later.

Assign goals

If you plan to send out a series of emails over the next month, look at past performance and create a goal of opens and/or click-throughs for each email that you want to send this month. And make sure you continue to monitor performance so you can easily make changes throughout the month to optimize your subject lines and calls to action.

Set dates

Include dates in your marketing plan – deadlines for when you want everything to be complete. Dates help keep you on track as well as keeping you organized. There’s no hard-and-fast rule as to when everything has to be done – you can do it in your own time, but writing down the dates is a good idea.

Do you currently have a road map for your business? Is there anything else you include in the marketing plan for a special project or even just your annual marketing plan? Share in the comments section below.

We also keep an ongoing email content log. We use this in several ways when working on our road map:

1)We can easily see what content was included in the most successful emails.
2)A lot of our content is seasonal. When planning for summer we can see what we did last summer.
3)We can make sure we don’t repeat content too often.
4)Struggling for ideas, we can look back and re-purpose or reuse content.